A very different cake that I created for a young man turning 15. I was asked to make something dark, inspired by his interests, which included scary movies and Stephen King novels. The tree is hand painted gumpaste over a wire frame. I also sculpted the raven from gumpaste. The rock work on the bottom was created from rice cereal treats, covered with fondant. I created texture on the fondant with royal icing, and then hand painted all the colors and also the black vines. The main vine in the middle is gumpaste. I used a mold for the fondant skulls – I would’ve driven myself crazy making all those from scratch! I had fun hacking them up and embedding them in the ‘rock’ at different angles, lol. I am really loving painting on cakes, and am always amazed at how color transforms everything. This cake was all white at one point, and I was afraid of not getting the depth that I wanted into it, but seriously love how it turned out. Each cake I do teaches me something! The top tier was lemon cake with lemon buttercream filling, and the bottom tier was chocolate cake with chocolate buttercream filling. I enjoyed creating this cake, and am glad it was well received!